F20 System Wide Change: No Default Sendmail

[Miloslav Trmač]

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 10:36 AM, Jaroslav Reznik <jreznik at redhat.com> wrote:
> = Proposed System Wide Change: No Default Sendmail =
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/NoDefaultSendmail
>
> Change owner(s): Lennart Poettering <lennart at poettering net>, Matthew
> Miller <mattdm at fedoraproject org>
>
> No longer install an MTA by default. (Specifically let's remove sendmail from
> @core and @standard comps groups.)
>
> == Detailed description ==
> Let's change the default install to no longer install an MTA by default.
> Specifically, let's remove sendmail from the @standard and @core group.
>
> On today's Internet most SMTP hosts do not accept mail from a server which is
> not configured as a mail exchange for a real domain, hence the default
> configuration of sendmail is seldom useful.

We don't necessarily have to have a MTA always running, or listening on port 25.

However, having the /usr/sbin/sendmail API available to applications
is valuable - it brings a significant system administration benefit of
centralizing the SMTP configuration.

Every application[1] can be rewritten to have its own SMTP client and
configuration instead of calling /usr/sbin/sendmail, sure, but the
system administrators are much better off if the applications call
/usr/sbin/sendmail and $whatever implementation handles that.

This is not a packaging matter of adding Requires:/usr/sbin/sendmail -
we get the benefit of centralization only if applications support
/usr/sbin/sendmail , and have it configured as the default.  Removing
a provider of /usr/sbin/sendmail from the default installation
entirely makes both of these application design choices problematic
and unlikely.
     Mirek


[1] GUIs and similar things targeted at people who don't want to deal
with strings like "/etc" are probably excluded; think of servers,
daemons and the like instead.